I know you all love my monday makeovers … but I am sure you love blog Candy even more so we will be giving away 4 cartridges, one of each of the latest releases…Rock Princess, Winter Frolic – lovely borders on this one, Happy Hauntings – check out the vampire font  -  and  County Life. These are due to arrive around 20th August but pre order now and get free express shipping on arrival.

For today’s makeover it is the turn of my guest bedroom. This room has been the most “reutilised” room in our house. When we moved in 6 years ago it was the office, then it became a spare bedroom/store room. When our dog had puppies in January 2008 we ripped out the carpet and made it the pup nursery. After that it was my office / craftroom and it has recently been reincarnated as the guest bedroom after Chris and I took over the guest bedroom for our combined office.

In there we have a black white and silver colour scheme.

Directly opposite the bed is this black photo frame I bought from a reject shop. It holds 18 6 by 4 inch pictures. What I have decided to do is turn it into a mini art gallery. I have invited the SGL design team along with a few customers and friends to design a 6 by 4 inch card, landscape style, with a colour scheme of black, white and silver.

Here are the 9 completed cards. Each day over the next week one designer will show you their creation in detail.

Monday – Mandy – Scrappy-go-Lucky Blog

Tuesday – Jane – Scossie Jane

Wednesday – Diane – Capadia Designs

Thursday – Chloe - Chloe and her Clip on Koalas

Friday – Tereesa- Up late 2 Create

Saturday – Amanda – White Ruffles

Sunday – Tracey – Trace- Elementz

Monday – Lisa and Tara – back here at SGL as they do not have blogs… yet.

Your job is to work out the theme. Add a comment to this post telling us what you think the theme is plus what your all time favourite cartridge is and why. 4 lucky winners will be drawn on Wednesday 18th August to receive one of the 4 cartridges.

As you can see I need another 9 cards to complete my mini gallery so if you would like to be in the next card swap drop me an email or leave a message and a way to contact you. You will need to make 9 cards in black, white and silver, 6 by 4 inches.

Here is my creation.

I wanted to create the look of an English cottage garden behind a picket fence.

I started with a 6 x 4 inch silver card base, followed by a black mat 5 ¾ x 3 ¾

The patterned paper is To Love & Cherish – Grace by Imaginisce. The bottom half of this had the sort of wild cottage garden look I was after.

I cut this in half vertically to make 6 x 12. Then I used  a piece of acetate 3 ½ x 5 ½  and moved it up and down until I got the most pleasing scene for my garden and cut this out at 5 ½  x 3 ½  and stuck it onto the black mat.

I cut the gate from Freshly Picked at 6 by 3 on the Gypsy with aspect ratio off. I then snipped the gate from the posts. I cut two of these for each card as I needed two of the gate.

I cut the layers, hinges and post details in sticky backed silver metal,  from 10 Seconds Studio, using kiss cut vinyl settings – low pressure, low speed, blade depth 2. Then I put these through the top half of the Tim Holtz for Sizzix embossing folder “Broken Glass”. I used the top half only as the shards were smaller here and suited the small pieces better.

The posts were shaded with Copic C3 cool grey  down each side, shaped them a little to look rounded and applied to the card with foam tape. The gate was embossed in Tim Holtz for Sizzix folder “wood grain” and subtly highlighted with Copic C1 cool grey. I cut two gates.

I applied a jewellery component fob loop, which I found in a local bargain store,  for the gate handle using a silver brad and then stuck the second gate on the back using a glue stick liberally to add rigidity once set. The quote, “Nature does not hurry yet everything is accomplished – Lao Tzu,” was printed on the computer and inititally applied behind one of my SU Hodge Podge Hardware labels. Unfortunately these ended up being too heavy for the gate so instead I applied a Kazazz label stamp with Versamark and silver embossing powder which still gave a good look.

The reverse side of the left over Grace paper was used to cut flowers for the garden. The star flower is from Accent Essentials. For the smaller flowers I used the two papers pictured above. I have no idea what these are called. I bought them at  a recent craft fair from a business specialising in the importation of Indian papers and embellishments. The smaller flowers are cut using the smallest flower on the Tim Holtz for Sizzix Tattered Flowers die.

I was glad I had my assistant, Sarah, to help me with this and in hindsight it would have been a whole lot quicker to do this on my Cricut picking something similar from one of my many cartridges but I am having a bit of a Tim Holtz obsession right now.

I am loving lots of texture so to finish it off I applied beads to the little ball flowers and Flower Soft for the black dandelions.

Hope you like it,

Mandy

…I know… I’m  late… it’s Wednesday! I blame the glorious Perth winter weather on Sunday and a truffle fest (the fungus kind) up in Mundaring with the promise of gourmet local truffle-infused foods, a glass of wine and some quality time with Chris while Sophie had an afternoon at Grandma and Grandad’s. It was just too nice to stay indoors and do craft!

So here is part 2 of Sophie’s bedroom makeover – the flowers she requested. This is the flower on the cushion and bed linen.

I used Sure Cuts a Lot 2 to create this. We distribute this software in the UK and the US as well as Australia so be sure to check it out if you don’t already have it. It is very easy to use and an economical way to get a lot more use out of your cricut machine.

I used only the basic shapes library that somes fre withthe software. By overlapping and welding 2 hearts I created the petals.

I then “grouped” these into a single image and copied and pasted 4 of them which I arranged around a 2 inch circle.

I then selected the whole image and used the “group” feature again. This allowed me to copy and paste the whole flower 4 times onto one 12 by 12 sheet.

One of the great features of SCAL is that you can copy and paste and the welding or grouping stays intact. I was then able to select the whole image and select  “Shadow” in the style box in the appearance drop down menu and this instantly creates a shadow in a variety of styles. I used the rounded shadow style. The dark pink image above is the shadow of the purple original.

The centre and stamens were created in a separate page / layer. I used a 2″ circle and some thin rectangles about  1/2 ” long which were arranged around the circle,  grouped and then copied and pasted.

I ended up with three layers to create the flower.

On the layer that was going to be stuck to the wall I applied Wall art Decor Adhesive by Glue Arts prior to cutting. This is a double sided repositionable adhesive that will not damage the paintwork on the walls. It is easy to peel the art off the wall and reapply somewhere else.

It is applied to your project in a similar way to contact, taking care not to to get any bubbles. I stuck my cardstock to the mat first, then applied the adhesive using a flat ruler to push along the adhesive and remove bubbles. This can then be cut in one go on the cricut machine. I  used blade depth 6, pressure max. Below you can see the shiny surface of the cover film.

I finished off the flowers with some bling. What little girl does not like a bit of bling! I didn’t have the right shade and so I used my copic sketch in Duck Blue to turn these pale green kaisercraft gems into the lovely shade of aqua that I wanted. This is one of my favourite things about copics. Being alcohol based they can be used to instantly change the shade of any scrapbook element, plastic metal, glass or fabric.

And here are the finished flowers.  And what did Sophie have to say?

“Beautiful mum. Now let’s make  some leaves and stems.”  Does it ever end?

Happy crafting, Mandy

Well it’s been an even busier couple of weeks than usual here and finishing Sophie’s wall decor has been put on hold as we have prepared for her birthday and a flurry of parties she has attended.  My cricut machine has not been so busy in a while.

Not including the wall decor in the last couple of weeks I have made 5 princess crowns from Once upon a princess, 6 party invitations using Sweet Treats, a Glass etched plate using Life’s a Beach, trimmings for the party treat bags and 5 personalised chefs hats, which will be featured here today. Watch out for the rest of the items over the next week.

I am really not happy with the quality of these videos and am trying to work out what is causing them to be so gainy so please bear with me. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.

Thanks for all your great comments on the Monday Makeover series, and my beautiful Pinky. I am glad to see I am not the only one who thinks she is adorable. She does enjoy getting involved and is very keen on being featured on film.

One of the comments on last Monday’s video came from one of our lovely regulars, Flowerdisco, who pointed out last week you can tap on the little eye icon on each layer of your design in the Gypsy to hide that layer. this is a very handy feature when working with multi page designs. What you can actually see on the messy gypsy screen in last weeks video, however, is not the other layers but the contours that have been hidden on the actually layer in view so that those contours do not cut. When you “hide selected contour” it never totally vanishes, just in case you want to reselect it and “unhide” it. I hope that makes sense

Have a great week, Mandy

Hi Everyone,

Here is my latest makeover video, featuring special guest helper Pinky.  I have used  Wall Decor and More and hide select contour feature on the Gypsy. Enjoy! Mandy

Hi Everyone,

Thanks to Tereesa for suggesting this new regular slot on our blog. I was talking to her about a few ideas I had on the go and she said – Why not make it “Monday Makeovers”?

Well… I have a few things on the go for is my daughter Sophie’s (aka Pinky) cubby house.  You will see episode one of ‘Pinky’s Plaque” HERE

Here is episode 2 & 3

Over the next few Mondays I will be showing you a few of  “Mandy’s Makeovers”.  Come back next Monday to see my spoon rack makeover.